Season 2 • Episode 2
When hitting a roadblock, Janet Fiore’s motto is always, “We can figure this out,” and that’s precisely what she did in the realm of disability education. Having a fear of getting it wrong or trying to figure out where to start was a challenge, and the results often lead to overcompensating or overreaching. Janet has cultivated a safe space for learners in The Sierra Group’s DisabilityEtiquette© course and DisabilityRecruiter© Certification. During this podcast, Janet discusses her initial draw to assistive technology, the work of The Sierra Group and its foundation and role in the disability space, and how employers can remove the obstacles to have a fully inclusive workforce.
About DE Talk
For DirectEmployers, it’s all about valuable connections and meaningful conversations. This monthly podcast features honest and open dialogue between powerhouse industry experts on a variety of HR topics ranging from OFCCP compliance advice to emerging recruitment marketing trends, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and insightful solutions that help infuse new life into your HR strategies.
Hosted by Candee Chambers, Executive Director of DirectEmployers Association.
Episode Guest
Janet Fiore
CEO, The Sierra Group, Inc.
Janet Fiore, a national authority on disability, diversity and compliance policy and procedure for business, is the President and CEO of The Sierra Group. She’s an award-winning speaker and consultative trainer who routinely provides media input as well as testimony for Congress, the GSA and the Department of Veterans Affairs. As a woman with numerous disabilities, Janet combines her business and rehabilitation expertise, along with her own professional and personal accommodation experiences in order to ‘drive up’ employment success for all of her customers.
Episode Transcript
Candee Chambers:
Welcome to the DE Talk podcast! Tune in for dialog between HR experts to amp up your HR strategies. Don’t worry, we’ll mix in a few laughs, as we know you need it.
This is Candee Chambers and you’re listening to another episode of the DE Talk podcast. Today I have the pleasure of sitting down to talk to Janet Fiore, the CEO and president of The Sierra Group, a nationally acclaimed workplace consultancy which facilitates training to entice change in disability hiring practices.
Janet is recognized as a national authority on disability, diversity, and compliance policy and procedure for businesses, and is an award winning speaker who routinely provides commentary to the media, as well as testimony for Congress, the GSA, and the Department of Veteran Affairs. Welcome, Janet!
Janet Fiore:
Thanks, Candee. Thanks for inviting me.
Candee Chambers:
We’re happy to have you as part of our second season of the DE Talk podcast. I have a few questions for you, and so I’m just going to go ahead and get started.
Janet Fiore:
Okay.
Candee Chambers:
I actually met you through Shannon Offord, I believe, who is our VP of Partnerships, and I’m incredibly thankful he introduced us because of your work in the disability space and the fact that it is just completely unparalleled. For listeners who aren’t familiar with your background, or The Sierra Group, I don’t know who those people would be, but can you share a little bit about yourself?
Janet Fiore:
Certainly. I would be happy to, Candee. I started out my professional career thinking that I was going to go to law school and be an employment lawyer. I’ve always had a desire to help everybody have the career that they wanted. That quickly turned to working out of a law firm as a paralegal, then working for an insurance carrier handling commercial liability claims. It was way back then that I learned about catastrophic loss, and how there was technology and devices that could help someone who’d been seriously injured, maybe became quadriplegic because of an accident, live and work independently.
Candee Chambers:
Interesting. It’s funny, I know a lot of labor and employment attorneys and my own daughter went to law school, and I asked her what field she was going to go into because I had been in HR my entire career, and I said, “You’re probably going to go into labor and employment, right?” And she said, “Heck no, mom.” And she ended up going into elder law, and I couldn’t understand why she thought that was going to be a good practice.
And I said, “Well, you’re never going to be able to pay off your school loans.” And I guess I hadn’t thought that people were getting older, and baby boomers were aging, and more people needed elder law attorneys, so I had to laugh when you talked about working for an insurance company because I worked as an intern while I was in college during the blizzard of ’78, so you talk about-
Janet Fiore:
Wow.
Candee Chambers:
So, I think we’re kind of on the same page here, Janet.
Janet Fiore:
Yeah. Definitely, and the employment lawyers that hire me now to help them with what’s called accommodation scenarios, they say to me, “You picked the right stop, because you get to really do something that’s impacting the ADA in the change, and we’re here to make sure that people are following the laws.” I look at is as kind of a sweet partnership, the way it all turned out. Who knew at the time, though?
Candee Chambers:
I think you’re exactly right, Janet, and you’ve done some great things, and we’ll talk about that a little bit here. How do you hope, when you’re doing training or even today, how do you always hope to impact your audience?
Janet Fiore:
It’s my number one goal, and it has been from the day I founded The Sierra Group back in the ’90s: I want to make a significant, noticeable difference in the lives of the people that I interact with, the businesses, as well as someone with a disability, and in making that difference, I want to reverse the high rate of unemployment. Unemployment of people with disabilities is still the highest of any number of a diversity group, and it just doesn’t have to be, Candee.
Candee Chambers:
You know what? I wholeheartedly agree. I recommend that the diversity and inclusion space is so big, again, and I don’t disagree, but you know, I did diversity training in the year 2000 for training 2000 employees face to face, so it’s so different today, and I don’t like considering it a program, it’s an initiative, but the thing is what I think people miss on diversity is disabilities. People with disabilities, because I always say around my offices that disabilities don’t discriminate. You can focus your covering efforts on people with disabilities, and you’re going to get people from every other protected class on Earth.
Janet Fiore:
Absolutely.
Candee Chambers:
Yep. And you can focus your efforts and target your efforts on hiring people with disabilities, and I think that makes so much sense, but we’ll have to keep working on that to get people to understand that.
Janet Fiore:
You’re absolutely right, and when looking to increase diversity across the board for every protected group, that is the factor that most don’t think about. Within every protected class. I’m a woman, I’m a woman with a disability. You’re almost getting a buy one get one, right?
Candee Chambers:
Exactly.
Janet Fiore:
It can be a twofer. Don’t leave out the worker with a disability. Studies show that in diversity initiatives, Candee, only seven percent of companies that have a full-blown diversity initiative are focused on how to deal with the disability portion of that. Again, it’s just awareness and wellness.
Candee Chambers:
I really think so, and you know, I think with all of the events of the very recent past, I think the focus is more on people of color but I think if we opened our minds and addressed individual biases that people have we would serve every population better, and I think that’s something that really needs to be the focus moving forward. Tell me about your journey, when you did create The Sierra Group, tell me about your journey as a female entrepreneur with disabilities. You’ve commented that you have a disability as well, and I’m in your same boat, so yeah, tell me about your journey.
Janet Fiore:
Well, thank you. I started my journey back in 1992, and I did not have any disabilities. I was drawn by what this new technology could do to let a person who’d become injured or was born with a disability do anything they wanted. I have entrepreneurial juices in my blood. I’m a second generation American. My grandparents, all four of them, didn’t know each other at the time, all four of them led Communist Romania for a better life in America, and my grandfather, my dad’s dad, started a trucking business where he sold international harvesters.
I wish I understood where he got the funding to do that back then. It was a question that, he died when I was 16, and I just never thought to ask it, but my dad taught me a motto that I’ve lived by that really was really what led me to become an entrepreneur within a niche that, back in 1992, really didn’t exist. He said, “If you want to do something in life, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth fighting for, and when you hit an obstacle, don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out.” My entire life, my dad has said, “We can figure that out.”
No matter what problem he was faced with. And people that know me well either love that or hate that because I tend to be incredibly tenacious, and I’ve got a whole lot of creativity behind that tenacity, and I don’t usually back away until I’ve figured out a solution. That’s what got me started. I thought the ADA came into law and it said people’s facilities were going to have the chance to go to work, and my love of technology, and all things, all gadgets, it just kind of came together and I said, “I’m going to do something with this.”
Candee Chambers:
Wow. Well, I think you had some great direction from your dad.
Janet Fiore:
Yeah, I did.
Candee Chambers:
That’s amazing. Gosh. You know, I have questions I want to ask but I have some I’m going to diverge away from a little bit just because he’s got so much good information that he’s provided you. Aside from you having that ability to have that tenacity to move forward and everything, what would you say was the hardest part, or was it just the financing, the hardest part of getting started? And what kept you pushing forward? Is it that training that your dad had provided?
Janet Fiore:
In large part, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t at least in my own mind say, “I can figure this out.”
Candee Chambers:
I’m going to put you on speed dial. I’m not kidding.
Janet Fiore:
Remember the easy button? You could just push it and there’s a recording. But I think the hardest part of getting started was proof of concept, because in the Janet Fiori mindset, “I can do this. There’s technology that can help.” One of my very first accommodation requests that came to me, a person had fallen down the stairs and became quadriplegic, and he wanted to learn to be a computer programmer, and my immediate reaction was, “We can figure this out. It’s going to be difficult, it’s going to take a lot, but we can figure it out.” And proving that concept was difficult because it takes time and money to find any solution, and in the early days of the company, the solution for this gentleman who’s named Elliott, the solution for his technology, an adaptive technology, was upwards of $20,000.
That same accommodation today would be about six or 700, but proving the concept could work when somebody had the right check to pay for it, that was difficult day in and day out, but thanks to the public-private partnership between government agencies like the vocational rehab programs that are in all 50 states, and businesses that wanted to be inclusive even way back then. The ADA was a catalyst, but convincing people to have a mindset of, “It really doesn’t hurt to try.”
Candee Chambers:
Yeah. You’re exactly right, and what I say so frequently is that it takes a leader who has a disability or who has a family member with a disability. You know, I think people have the idea that it will never happen to them, and I found out I had type on diabetes when I was 25 on my older daughter’s second birthday, and I remember my younger daughter telling me, she was born two years later, and she said, “You know, mom, I’ve never known you as a non-diabetic.” I thought, “Wow.” That was true.
Janet Fiore:
Interesting.
Candee Chambers:
You know, but that was pretty while, but you know, I literally took the attitude that by the time we’re older we’ll all have something, and I just got mine early, and I think we need to start recognizing, I mean you and I do, but I think we as a people need to recognize that we all have something that is maybe different. I don’t really like the word different, but an issue that we are dealing with. I don’t even like the word disability. I have a condition I live with.
Janet Fiore:
Correct.
Candee Chambers:
And so that’s where I think we tend to put almost a negative connotation on it. It’s just who we are, you know? And when my daughter said she didn’t know me before I had diabetes, I thought, “Wow, she doesn’t know me except as a person with a disability.” And that’s why I don’t like that word, you know? So-
Janet Fiore:
It is-
Candee Chambers:
Oh, go ahead.
Janet Fiore:
No, it’s kind of humbling to think about that and, in ’92, when I started my company, I did not have a disability. I really had seen through my work in the insurance industry and catastrophic loss, I saw the ability to help others, and then I had a health crisis in 2004. I developed stage four breast cancer, and then the chemotherapy that saved my life, thank goodness. I had radical surgery and chemotherapy, and a blood disorder that I didn’t know I had caused a reaction so the bones in my hips got it, and that’s when I became someone with physical disabilities that I would compensated forever. I also developed an autoimmune disorder with my vision.
I have a chronic impairment with my vision. I have some issues to this day from bone death in the bottoms of my feet and my hips, and guess what? I just accommodate it. If ever I had to learn that receiving help by way of an accommodation is hard work, too, maybe that helps me see, because it’s a humbling experience to accept that you have a limit that you didn’t want to have, and then just find a work related workaround.
Candee Chambers:
I wholeheartedly agree. I had a serious car accident last year, and I broke my wrist. I had a plate and eight screws. I broke my leg, broke my sternum, and was in a wheelchair for six weeks, and then in a brace for eight weeks, and I’ll tell you what, that really taught me a lot. Because I was in a wheelchair temporarily, but actually learning what people have to accept, what they have to understand, and the limitations that come with that, and then the people that just want to push you because they think that you need help. There’s a lot of things that people don’t understand and I know that you do some training in some of those areas so we’re going to talk about that in a few minutes, but there’s so much that people don’t know.
I’ve never been in a wheelchair, and I could not put weight on my foot, so I didn’t have a choice. I mean, people would wheel me into the bathroom, and you know, it’s hard to accept that type of assistance, and so there’s a lot that people can learn, and that’s, I guess, Janet, why I’ve been so excited to have you on this podcast, because you do things in your training that people don’t do out there in the workplace, as far as certifying recruiters and that sort of thing, so what would you say that the most prevalent requests are that you receive from employers?
Janet Fiore:
That’s a great question, and I think the number one … there’s two responses. We’re scared to do it until we get some sensitivity and awareness training. We don’t want to offend anyone. The fear of offending a person by doing or saying the wrong thing or getting it wrong is an underlying issue for most folks that are looking to make an accommodation, and then they want to be fair. People want to be fair to the worker with a disability and they want to be fair to the whole team, so how do I get started on the right track so I don’t run amuck of the law or under compensate or overreach?
I really think the number one response is, “How in the world do we get going with this?”
And then it’s easy. Once I can help this person past that fear and just be aware, and realize you’re doing the right thing, and the ADA police don’t usually come arrest anyone. There’s an interactive process is what it says. You interact and you figure it out and you communicate and talk about it, and then once you’ve identified the work related impairment, maybe the person has arthritis and they can’t use the keyboard, now you know that they’re typing slowly and they could lose their job because of production.
Now we’re dealing with something that’s easy to fix.
Candee Chambers:
Right, right. You know, what I’ve learned, and I’m talking about myself as a recruiter or even a compliance person in corporate America. You need a safe space. You need to have somebody that you can ask a stupid question of, and really, because you don’t know what you don’t know, and you can ask questions and not have somebody come down on you. I have always had people in my life like that that I could ask questions to, and it goes so far in helping me be better.
You know, and I still make plenty of mistakes, but it’s nice to have that safe space and you can ask that question you’re afraid to ask someone else, and not feel like you’re going to be looked down upon.
Janet Fiore:
Exactly.
Candee Chambers:
That is a challenge. How do you continue to learn on your own and stay on top of things in your own role, and update your training, and what do you do to learn, yourself?
Janet Fiore:
I love following trends and legislation. I subscribe to all sorts of trade journals, disability-related, being a member of the international association of digital accessibility has been a great learning for me because the roadblocks for the future of people with disabilities is lack of digital access to everything that we know.
I think the number one way that … there are two number one ways I learn. I go to conferences all the time. I don’t just speak but I attend every session and ask questions and develop relationships with others that are doing something in the space like all of you guys do to DirectEmployers. I learned so much by coming to your event a couple years ago out in Seattle.
Candee Chambers:
Well, you are welcome anytime.
Janet Fiore:
Hearing what recruiters are faced with and understanding their challenges, and then finding myself a mentor in any industry that I don’t know enough about. Learning from people that know what they’re doing, you know. That’s really how I keep fresh and keep my personal skills still going.
Candee Chambers:
You know, I had somebody reach out to me probably five or six years ago and asked me to be a mentor, and nobody had ever asked me that before, and it’s kind of a neat thought, and we do that with our members here, but I’d not thought of it in my current role to reach out and still, my younger daughter always says she doesn’t understand why people think that when they reach a certain level they can stop learning. She said, “You have to constantly learn to keep improving yourself.”
Janet Fiore:
Exactly.
Candee Chambers:
And you know, that’s a neat idea. I think anybody could afford to have a mentor at any stage in their career. I think that’s a good piece of advice, and that’s not even something that we planned on talking to you about. Anyway, so The Sierra Group Foundation. It’s a nonprofit that you also lead. It runs the region’s largest adult vocational training program in Philadelphia, so could you tell me a little bit about that program?
Janet Fiore:
I’d be happy to. It was probably around the year 2012 that the liberty resources academy that The Sierra Group had consulted on and helped develop came to us. Liberty Resources is a center for independent living that deals with advocacy issues for individuals with disabilities. We had created a vocational training program for them, and they came to us and said so many changes are going on in employment that you guys in The Sierra Group are staying on top of. Why don’t we reverse the relationship here and instead of paying you to help us run this program, why don’t you buy it back and run it yourself?
They wanted us to do that but they wanted us to do that through our nonprofit foundation, the workplace technology foundation that does business as The Sierra Group Foundation. That meant that we were going to be able to take everything that we had learned in years of helping work site accommodations and dealing with business needs, and individuals with disabilities being accommodated one at a time. That let us kind of go to more of a systemic program where we bring in people with disabilities remotely or on site and teach them business skills as well as any technology skills that they need, adaptive or otherwise.
It’s a project that lights up my heart and makes me feel really good because we’re helping workers … we’re helping people with disabilities become workers who may have thought that their disability was too severe or their agitation and upbringing had not enabled them to know how to use technology and get ahead.
Candee Chambers:
You know, it’s funny. I think this remote work that everybody is participating in, and I’ve said this for several years, but remote work is by far the absolute best for people with disabilities. Especially serious disabilities where they have to have maybe a caregiver to help come in and get them ready for work, or have transportation issues, and they’re capable of working. This remote opportunity is spectacular for them.
Janet Fiore:
It’s amazing. Yeah.
Candee Chambers:
It really is, and they can add value and feel good about themselves, and I mean it’s a wonderful opportunity, and I hope we see more and more companies willing to take that opportunity on.
Janet Fiore:
And businesses, recruiters are saying to me, recruiters that we have worked with for years and trained and helped, they’re saying, “I’m excited that jobs like call center employment and other positions that could be done anywhere but were never deemed as okay to do remote, now that we’ve gone to a pandemic and everything went remote overnight, now companies are saying hiring more and more people with disabilities to work remotely is something we feel we can really do.”
And I’m just grateful that we were early adopters of technology, and remote training, and online training, so that when this pandemic hit, our school and center studies building went remote overnight. We called everybody up, we got their personal emails, we said, “Use your phone if you have to until we get a computer at your house, but we’re going to keep this learning thing going.”
Candee Chambers:
You know what? Thank goodness you were able to do that. You know? I mean, that is the difference between success and failure. You know? I mean, that’s amazing. We went remote overnight and I thank my lucky stars every day that everybody had a laptop and we were able to do that. You know, but not everybody was, and trying to keep everybody safe is one of my very top priorities.
Janet Fiore:
It’s been a challenge.
Candee Chambers:
Yep, yep.
Janet Fiore:
Yeah, these were, “We can figure it out,” moments, for all of us.
Candee Chambers:
Exactly. Share with the listeners a little bit, there’s The Sierra Group, and we just talked about The Sierra Group Foundation. Explain how they operate independently but they share a common goal, and why don’t you kind of go into just a little bit of detail about how they’re alike and how they differ?
Janet Fiore:
I’m happy to. If a person is already working as an employee at a company, and they need some accommodation help, that’s The Sierra Group Incorporated. We go out, we’re hired by the employer, we help them with that situation, we help them if it gets sticky or tricky and they think that maybe the accommodation is going to be an undue hardship. We get together and try to figure out if there’s a way to make it possible, easier than what everybody else might’ve had in mind.
Also, on The Sierra Group Incorporated, we create systems within organizations to be sure that they’re as accessible as they want to be, helping them with recruitment, and onboarding, and everything that they need to know. On The Sierra Group Foundation, that’s where we’re working with individuals, typically an individual who has maybe grown up in poverty, or they have not been able to overcome the digital divide. Finance or internet access, computer skills.
They have a disability and based on socioeconomic factors they don’t necessarily have the tech skills that everybody else in the job market has already mastered. That’s where our foundation comes in, and we’re really committed to overcoming the digital divide and doing that with state of the art technology that’s fully digitally accessible, so that’s kind of the difference in a nutshell.
Candee Chambers:
I mean, I was listening just a few minutes ago when you were talking about The Sierra Group Foundation, we were talking more about the adult vocational training. I understand that you place something like 73 percent of the graduates each year.
Janet Fiore:
We do, we do.
Candee Chambers:
That’s incredible. How do you do that? With employer partners, or what’s your process like?
Janet Fiore:
Well, and that kind of took us back to our roots, having started out as a company that largely worked for business and for employers, we learned a heck of a lot about what a business wants when they hire somebody, and what they need, what they’re really seeking by way of their disability recruitment initiative, and then when we took over the training school that we’d helped found here in Philly, it made sense to call up all of our local worker customers and say, “Hey, I’ve got a pipeline of talent for you.”
We put people in as short term interns, no matter the age of the person. Just like you can benefit from a mentor at any time in your career, anybody going back into a new job can benefit from a quick internship, so we started offering those opportunities to our corporate partners in Philly, and the pipeline quickly became something that’s activated, so we have lots and lots of repeat requests for candidates with disabilities coming out of our foundation’s training school.
Candee Chambers:
You know, you made an interesting comment. You had said that a lot of these people that are assisted through these programs are maybe low economic status and you know, technologically challenged, because they don’t have the opportunity. I mean, we’ve got, in all the schools now, there’s a lot of kids in lower socioeconomic areas, they don’t have computers. They don’t have internet. You know, I mean, schools are giving out iPads and mobile hotspots now to help, but not all of the kids are even going to get them.
And so there are a lot of people, but what I was thinking when you were talking is that you’ve got your own diversity process and outreach setup in that program because you’re … and again, you’re working with people with disabilities who are already having a difficult time, and then their personal circumstances are making it even more difficult, so you’re doing some amazing things, Janet. And for companies to work with you and bring those people on, I mean, they’re improving their D&I initiative right off the bat and getting qualified people.
Janet Fiore:
Absolutely.
Candee Chambers:
Yeah. That’s amazing.
Janet Fiore:
And the need to accommodate for remote work, like suddenly our corporate requests for, “Help us accommodate everybody that suddenly went home last night with their laptop, and has a disability,” that kept us really, really busy. But what was surprising and cool was on the sending home our students who came to us because they weren’t that tech savvy to start with, and they felt empowered because whatever technology they had, even if it was the telephone, and we were Fed-Exing old fashioned correspondence type lessons to people in the beginning until we could get them some technology at their homes, people’s pride in learning, it’s just shot through the roof.
Like, “I can be part of the world right now despite the fact that everything is closed and everything is happening remotely, and I’m learning how to get a job at the same time.” The obstacles created by pandemic as far as educating people who had previously kind of been victimized by the digital divide, suddenly, the digital divide had to be obliterated. There was no other way to approach it, so out of necessity we managed to.
You know, I’m looking around our 75 computers. 75 computers in an empty computer lab. And I’m like, “We’ve got to get this to the people if they don’t have one.”
Candee Chambers:
Exactly, because there’s a lot of usage that needs to be capitalized on.
Janet Fiore:
Right, right, and our partners that hired us, so going back to the gist of your question, the partners that always hired from us started hiring more and more people because of remote work opportunities and they’re saying, “You people are so well suited to come in and work remotely or do a hybrid, partly on-site, partly remote job, because you trained them while they weren’t physically at your school.”
Candee Chambers:
Wow. You need to get some of those testimonials, and maybe you already have them, but that’s pretty incredible.
Janet Fiore:
No, no, we’re actually working on that right now. Some of these folks that have done this really deserve to be spotlighted in some stories, and you know, we counted. We have more than 10,000 stories of workplace accommodation. I can’t wait to add the stories of what I’ll call a remote accomplishment.
Candee Chambers:
Oh yeah. I think that’s a huge story, Janet, that people need to hear and see that it can work for other big companies, so we’ll help you with that.
Janet Fiore:
Good, good. Let’s do that.
Candee Chambers:
Well, I’ll tell you what. I am so very anxious to have you talk about two of the things that I was first drawn to The Sierra Group when I learned about, and that is your disability recruiter certification programs and your disability etiquette for everyone programs. I don’t know anybody that shouldn’t go through that, so why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about those programs?
Janet Fiore:
Absolutely. The disability recruiter certification came about because one of our very large customers in the pharmaceutical space said, “We’re telling our recruiters that they need to recruit more people with disabilities, and they need to interview and onboard, and we’re not really giving them a solid base from which they know how to do that. Is there anything out there that can train people to do this, but we want to train people up en masse?” And I had already been toying with the concept of creating a certification program to do just that.
Facility recruiter certification is eight modules, takes 19 hours to complete, and that’s because, I know it’s a commitment, I did not want to create more talking points without action items, because when you learn something there’s a trick in training that I’m sure you know. If you don’t use what you learn within 10 days of learning it, you’re not going to retain very much. You’re going to kind of go, “Yeah, I remember learning something about that one time,” and you’re not going to remember what it is.
For each of our modules, we have sensitivity and awareness, and then you do a practicum, which is an exercise where you take on a disability for 30 minutes of your work day, and you then write up how you accommodated yourself, what awareness you got by taking on the disability. All of our segments of the homework assignment, we call it a practicum, and you have to email your results to one of our consultants who personally grades them, so we converse with you. Nobody gets all the way through to the end and certified without taking some actions that give a-ha moments in their own story, because you never forget a good story or a tough story.
It’s easy to forget information. We take the certification, it starts with sensitivity and awareness, then we go to accessibility part one and two. First off, Candee, if the job application process is not fully accessible at your company from job cert to career site, you’re going to be screening out countless thousands of workers with disabilities and you didn’t even know it.
Candee Chambers:
We are strong, strong proponents of accessible websites. You know, our wholly owned for-profit subsidiary, Recruit Rooster, develops accessible career sites, so that’s very near and dear to our hearts, so I’m glad to hear you say that because it’s so true.
Janet Fiore:
And it has to be. Yeah. It’s how many … like, when we teach folks at The Sierra Group Academy how to go online and search for jobs, they’re constantly hitting obstacles like, “I’m using a screen reader and when I’m filling out the application I have a blank line and it’s not until I get to the next button that it tells me what I was supposed to fill out in the first field.”
It’s really, and these are easy fixes, but it basically is when someone in the force goes, “Oh my god, we didn’t have a phone number on the website that you could call for help.” And we added that, and then everybody can be part of the worker recruitment process, so that’s the accessibility part one, and then after that we teach a lot about the accommodation process.
Because accommodation has to be offered at the time of interview, and when you offer the accommodations, we teach people through stories and examples and takeaway tips how not to be afraid that somebody might actually need one. What do you do with it? You don’t have to freak out and you don’t have to know the answer right then. You hear the requests and you say, “Let me get with my team and get right back to you.” It’s not as hard as people make it. After that, we go over compliance because fear of the law and helping stay past without following everything that’s in the law, those are the two big obstacles that sometimes I think recruiters think, “It might be easier to steer clear of someone who needs an accommodation than screw it up and get my company into legal trouble.”
Candee Chambers:
Exactly.
Janet Fiore:
Yeah. We try to bridge that gap with enough layman knowledge of the law and enough stories of how you can make an accommodation work. That module on compliance probably feeds the frustrated, never made it to employment lawyer side of me, while being very careful to say that we are not lawyers.
Candee Chambers:
Yeah, I get that. I have to put that little disclaimer there on everything I say and do.
Janet Fiore:
Right, right. We joke in our session, we’re not lawyers, and as you can probably tell from our video sessions, we’re not movie makers, but we’re people that know how to make this kind of thing work.
Candee Chambers:
Well, we do a lot where we give the legal perspective and then we cut over to the HR side where I normally say, “This is how you make that legal jargon work.”
Janet Fiore:
Exactly.
Candee Chambers:
You know, so anyway.
Janet Fiore:
Exactly. Full and open conversation between HR, in house counsel or journal counsel, and then talking with the line manager and the people. That’s all part of the interactive process. People think they should be talking to legal or HR people until there’s a program. So much can be learned if more conversational interaction happens every time you’re looking at increasing the ability to do accommodations, and that kind of goes to our other big component of this certification for recruiters, and that’s full team integration.
Nothing can happen in a silo when it comes to knowing all the tools that you need to know for full disability compliance and integration.
Candee Chambers:
That’s a critical point. I’m happy to hear you say that. I mean, we talk about silos, and I think we’ve really worked so well during this pandemic to collaborate with one another, and those silos have just kind of gone by the wayside because you just pick up the phone or you have a Zoom meeting with somebody, and it doesn’t really matter what level they are, and I mean, it’s really been beneficial for us, but I think the opportunity to have a team to work with and that way you have a chance to cover all your bases, and not everybody knows everything.
I mean, nobody knows everything, you know? And to admit that you don’t know what you don’t know, I think, is a critical step in the process. One thing that we do, you talk about not having a phone number on a website. We have a quality assurance team that literally goes and checks people’s websites. I mean, our members. To say, “Hey, this is missing, your tagline is missing. You need to put this on there. You have to correct how you have this set up.” And that sort of thing. But you know, it’s interesting. If you have a person that needs an accommodation and they try to reach out to somebody because they have a phone number or an email address, and people don’t get back with them, because what we find is that a lot of times people don’t even know that their name or their email address or their phone number is one the website, and they’ll get a phone call for a request for an accommodation.
They’re like, “What?” You know, “Why are you calling me?” As opposed to having an accessible website that basically takes any difficulty away for a person needing that accommodation, and they now have the same opportunity as a person without a disability to get through the selection process.
Janet Fiore:
A process. Exactly.
Candee Chambers:
You know, and that, I think … we’ll get there eventually, I think, but I think that message is what needs to get out and I think this recruiter training, I mean, recruiters carry a lot of weight because they’re bringing people in their front door, and so I think that would be incredible.
They get certified, then, right? After they complete this training?
Janet Fiore:
They do, they do. They go on to get some help on finding the talent who happen to be people with disabilities, and a pre-interview and a post-offer checklist are part of the training, so they took some tools from their toolkit, and yes, they are certified to be, and the certification’s good for two years, and then we have a broad variety of continuing adaptivities that they can participate in to be able to be re-certified.
Candee Chambers:
Okay, all right. Well, I think I’m going to say-
Janet Fiore:
And I should also mention that the uses come along with it, to get our certification, our seal, which is recognized and shows the world including job applications with disabilities that you’ve taken the time to learn about them, because people, and the economy keeps changing whether we’re a worker shortage or a worker surplus, but people will always know where they feel like they’re going to be welcomed, and in addition to that, HRCI ensure continuing ed credits can be earned. You can get 18 credits from going through this certification.
Candee Chambers:
Wow. That’s incredible. That’s a big selling point, because boy, I’ll tell you what, when you have to get re-certified with 65 credits, it’s like, “Oh my gosh.” I used to teach. I counted one time I had like 489 hours that I had taught in three years, and I got nine hours of credit, and I was like, “Aw, jeez.” 18 credit hours is a lot.
Janet Fiore:
It sure is. It is.
Candee Chambers:
Oh gosh. Darn, I was thinking, something I wanted to ask. I’ll think of it as I go on, but that’s really important that they can continue their training. Oh, I know what I was going to say. One thing that we keep talking about here is the importance, and you said it, you know, having people feel welcome when they go to a company. We’ve talked about some of the creative work that we do on our creative team in Recruit Rooster and how they can do videos of leaders in the organization, or just people with disabilities, or veterans, or whatever the group is, and talk about why you like working for that particular company, what it is that made you feel welcome when you came in the front door.
And what I’m thinking is that that certification is something that can be discussed and advertised, and that, to your point, would say, “Gosh, we’ve spent this time and money to do this recruiter certification because we want to make the opportunity for people with disabilities to come into our office and find positions here a much better process for them.” And you know, blah, blah, blah. They could go on and that would be brilliant to help the people with disabilities and help the company bring those people in the door.
Janet Fiore:
Absolutely.
Candee Chambers:
You know, because yeah, I like that a lot. I really like that a lot, so we’ll have to advertise that more as we move forward in this. The disability etiquette program, that’s something that I think people need on a regular basis, and it’s kind of a companion short course, I think, but who do you see normally that takes this course and any a-ha moments that you get from watching this?
Janet Fiore:
Yeah, definitely. In fact, we interned at some facility, had visits for everyone, so visits were for everyone. Kind of work related, but you know, anybody would learn a little bit more about disability and jobs by being part of it, but our certified disability by being part of it, but our certified facility recruiters have actually become missionaries for the market. We didn’t realize that as we were teaching people skills we were creating champions with each and every one of them, and they started coming to us and saying, “I wish my line managers knew as I knew. I wish that people even in our D&I space, who are completely committed to diversity and inclusion and equity, but they’re also not really familiar about disability and the etiquette, we wish they knew some of what we learned so that they’re never going to go through 19 hours and 8 modules to start them because they’re not recruiters.”
They don’t need to know the whole thing, so we created the short course which is four modules. They total about an hour, and it helps everyone learn, first off, what are some of the types of disability, and how might they need to be accommodated in a particular type of job? And then word choice. We’re always asked what’s the right term, what’s the right lingo, so we in this course took that question to 20 people with disabilities in our classrooms and said, “What do you think when you hear the term disability etiquette?” And it’s really eye-opening what some people have to say.
Those are some stories that stick with the people and open their minds. We have teachers, educators, special educators, folks that lead large engineering firms or IT projects saying, “Oh my goodness, I never thought about all that goes into being a person with a disability, and how much people can do or choose not to do and need to do with an accommodation.” It kind of came out of a hidden passion to take a big sledgehammer to this obstacle of digital inaccessibility, and you can’t just say to people, “Make all of your electrical documents accessible,” without eyes glazing over, if you’re not an IT person.
We have our course module that makes up this one hour training that’s easy, you can do it all at once. There’s a quiz at the end of each module. If you fail the quiz, you can keep taking until you, you know, there are prompts there until you learn what you need to know, but the last module of it talks about the digital divide and digitally excluding people is the worst form of all etiquette, so we’re getting that knowledge in there that it’s not hard to be digitally inclusive in everything that you do, from ordering a pizza to having a job application or a job fare where you’ve got materials in braille. We throw that all together so that you’re not tripping over etiquette issues as you try to have a fully inclusive workforce.
Candee Chambers:
Interesting, interesting. You know, it’s funny. I can probably already guess the answer to this question, but I mentioned before I have type one diabetes and I’m a … or, let me back up. I’m really big in the compliance space, you know, with disabilities, and I share the fact that I have type one diabetes, and you know, I’m a person that tries to help our members when they have audits and they’re trying to make sure that they get through the focused reviews for section 503, which is the regulation for individuals with disabilities, but you know, it’s funny, because I tend to go back always to where my passion is with the regulations, and of course it’s with section 503, but you know, Vevra has the listing and posting which is basically our main mission for listing jobs for priority referral for protected veterans.
What of your training is your favorite? What is the part of the training that you offer, what piece is really, you get to teach about it and it’s like, “Oh, this is so much fun. I really love this.” Because we have a joke here that listing and posting is my soap box, and they try to have me talk for 10 minutes. I’m like, “Well, maybe in two days I’ll be done.” What is your favorite?
Janet Fiore:
My absolute favorite thing to teach and where I get the most fulfillment, I even read a lot of their practicum exercises myself on these modules, is the interview process. The interview is the gateway to actually having a chance to get a job, and without a skillset to know what to say, what not to say, offering an accommodation to every single person before they come, know what it sounds like if you send a digital map of your facility to a person who’s sight impaired. They’re going to need to have their Uber driver or someone get them to your location, too, and if you didn’t properly tag that map for accessibility it’s going to sound like absolute garbage on the morning that you’re trying to get out to your job interview.
Like, teaching a recruiter to know what it’s like to be a person with a disability being invited to an interview, and then once the offer is made, having the wherewithal to ask everyone that you make an offer to, “Do you anticipate a need for reasonable accommodation during training and onboarding?” If you ask, the people will tell you, and instead of being afraid that they might ask, go ahead and offer, because most accommodations are common sense workarounds, and if you know the person needs it, you can figure it out.
Teaching that a-ha moment, that I don’t have to hope and pray, that I don’t get hit with a request I don’t know how to handle, but instead I’m bold enough because I’ve got some tools that I’m just going to offer to accommodate everyone. That’s my favorite.
Candee Chambers:
Yeah, and I think that’s a good one. You know, I’m going to ask you one more question about accessibility, but you know, it’s interesting, because accessibility on your website will only get you through the interview process. You need to make sure that people can do their job through whatever accommodation that they might need, but you know, it’s been really good with director Lean at the OFCCP because he has really made, or has really improved, the focus with individuals with disabilities.
And in the 2020 virtual webinar series, I was really pleased to hear him say that career sites should be fully accessible so that it’s not a barrier to employment. I was kind of sitting there going, “Yay, we really like that.” But what do you recommend as the first thing that employers need to do on their career site to ensure that it is accessible?
Janet Fiore:
Well, and that’s where my response to that, and what I’ll say, a popular response might be a little bit different. I still say the first thing you should offer is accessibility includes digital divide issues. Put a phone number on there. Put an email address. Don’t make it so that a person living in poverty without access to a computer, and AT, and a high speed internet, can’t really apply for your job, because you go to the library and you get kicked off every hour.
Candee Chambers:
That’s a really good point.
Janet Fiore:
Don’t hesitate to-
Candee Chambers:
That’s a really good point, Janet.
Janet Fiore:
It’s practical. It shouldn’t be the bandaid you rely on to not bother making your site digitally accessible for an AT user, an access technology user. That should be there, too, but go ahead and make a phone number be there. Make it a means, and then make sure that that number goes somewhere. We actually answer calls for different companies that don’t feel like they should be the one picking up … you know, if that number rings and they don’t know what to do, so they route it to us and a voice mail or a person, and there’s a 24 hour turnaround to make sure that accessibility question is answered.
But talking one to one about what people need, the internet job search process was not intended to eliminate people having a spare shot at getting their application seen. It was really to make it so everybody had an equal shot, but equal’s not equal if you can’t make it happen online.
Candee Chambers:
That’s an interesting statement, but you’re exactly right. That’s very cool that you guys answer phones for people too, because like I said, a little while ago I didn’t even know you did that, but I’ve talked to people that said, “We don’t even know why my number’s on the website.” So that’s pretty good.
Janet Fiore:
It’s not a good surprise to get that. The other pet peeve that I have and probably because of my own chronic eye disease, some days my vision is much better than others, the font choice and the color contrast. Everybody loves that soft gray look for the ink on your website. Well, I’ve got to turn on peak output if you’ve got too much of that going on, because it’s hard on the eyes, so that’s another simplistic touch that I think, you know, it doesn’t take any money to make those two changes happen.
Candee Chambers:
Well, and I think, Janet, there are so many disabilities out there that people don’t even know about. You know, and don’t even know that can be accommodated, or even how you would even begin to accommodate them, you know, and it’s, again, people don’t know what they don’t know, and I think if they had the opportunity to gain a little more knowledge, things would be a whole lot different and better. Especially for people with disabilities looking for employment. One last question, and then I’m going to do some rapid fire just fun ones to end on, but what is one common myth about individuals with disabilities that you are working to de-stigmatize?
Janet Fiore:
That we all fall into a category that can be overcome through an initiative. The common myth is that if we do a bring to work program for a certain type of folks with disabilities, we’ve checked the box. The myth is I am as different from my staff, who are largely people with disabilities, as I am from my friends and from you and from anyone else I meet. There are very few similarities person to person. We just all happen to maybe need an accommodation.
Candee Chambers:
But they’re all different and everything else, right? Yeah, no.
Janet Fiore:
Yep.
Candee Chambers:
I think that’s a good point, that’s a good thing to end on, I think. We’re going to be working with you to include the recruiter certification in our academy, and we’re so very excited, Janet. I want to make sure that all of our members know about your training because I get questions all the time about people with disabilities and how to hire and what they should be doing, and there’s so much work to be done, but the good thing that I see is that they’re recognizing that it needs to be done, and that’s a huge step in the process.
Janet Fiore:
It is, and we’re here in the world that you want to offer this to your members, because my mission is for everyone to know what I know about hiring people with disabilities, since it’s not that hard. But if you don’t know, you said that earlier, you don’t always know what you don’t know and having a couple of courses that can really change that in a set amount of time, that to me can change the future of employment for people with disabilities.
Candee Chambers:
Well, and you know what, Janet? One thing that, when I first got into this space, I learned that there’s so many different organizations and they all intend to compete, and you know, by coming together, we all win.
Janet Fiore:
Absolutely.
Candee Chambers:
And I don’t understand, you know, it’s like, what is our MO? You know, what is it that we want to achieve? And if we truly want to help people with disabilities find employment, then we all need to come together so we all win.
Janet Fiore:
Absolutely.
Candee Chambers:
That’s just kind of my little mantra. Let’s end on some fun notes.
Janet Fiore:
Okay.
Candee Chambers:
I’m going to ask you some rapid fire questions, so feel free to say whatever comes to your mind first. All right?
Janet Fiore:
Okay. I’m ready.
Candee Chambers:
I was reading these and I was like, “Oh, I don’t know how I would answer this,” so hopefully you’re better at it than I would be.
Janet Fiore:
We’ll see, Candee.
Candee Chambers:
I get to be the one to ask the question. I don’t have to answer it. Okay, if you could have a billboard with anything on it, what would it be and why?
Janet Fiore:
I have daydreams about a billboard that says recruit disability. It happens to be our .org website, but that’s the answer to my dreams. Recruit disability. Recruit people with disabilities. If you read it, maybe you’ll do it.
Candee Chambers:
That’s great. All right. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in life?
Janet Fiore:
Never walk away from a fight I believe in.
Candee Chambers:
I like that. You know what? I think we must be twins from a different mother or something, because I always joke around that if I keep fighting on something and if I keep pushing, it’s because I know I’m right, and if I give up easily it’s like, “Okay, well, I’m not so sure about that.” It kind of reminds me of the same-
Janet Fiore:
I hear you.
Candee Chambers:
Okay. What’s your favorite beverage, alcoholic or non-alcoholic?
Janet Fiore:
I would have to say currently it’s a frozen vodka lemonade from the restaurant on the corner from me. Here in Summer City, so really where I live, we have this weird temporary law where you’re allowed to get an alcoholic beverage to go. When you buy that frozen vodka lemonade, it’s a nice dog walk that day. You know, on a Sunday afternoon.
Candee Chambers:
Oh yeah. I like that. It’s a nice dog walk drink. That’s pretty good. Okay, so what’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?
Janet Fiore:
Wow. I think, “You help me believe in myself.” “You helped me,” is the best compliment.
Candee Chambers:
Oh, good.
Janet Fiore:
Yeah.
Candee Chambers:
Okay, all right. Well, I was thinking, I don’t know how you’d only come up with one. I’m sure you’ve gotten plenty. Okay, last but not least, when are you the most inspired?
Janet Fiore:
Mornings are my inspiration. My journal, my quiet time, my talks with god. That’s where I re-energize each and every day, Candee.
Candee Chambers:
Okay. All right. Well, you’re obviously getting the right inspiration, because you’re doing a lot of wonderful things, so thank you so much for joining me today, Janet. I know I speak for so many of us within DE but we are grateful for your partnership and really look forward to including the various courses from The Sierra Group which I mentioned within our academy very soon.
I think you know this already but I truly admire the work that you do and the mission of reversing the rate of unemployment of people with disabilities. For our listeners, you can connect with Janet on LinkedIn or by visiting TheSierraGroup.com for more information on their program and services.
Thank you for tuning in for another episode of the DE Talk Podcast. Stay connected with DirectEmployers on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and be sure to subscribe to the podcast to receive notifications of new episodes each month.
